Considering Rurality and Social Class: Rural, Poor, and Working-Class Students’ Cultural Experiences in Higher Education

• In Event: Supporting the Higher Education Access and Success of Rural Students With Additional Marginalized Identities

Abstract

Modern rurality is linked to social class (Jensen, 2018). Rural communities remain dependent on industries that are low-paying and/or declining (e.g., service industries, agriculture), creating some of the highest rates of U.S. poverty (Ajilore & Willingham, 2019). Such geographic and social class factors layer together to impact rural, poor and working-class postsecondary trajectories. Yet the literature has only quantitatively illuminated such intertwining rural and social class factors (Wells et al., 2019, 2023) or qualitatively how such factors impact college access, not success of rural, poor and working-class students at colleges/universities.

This study utilizes qualitative narrative inquiry methods to explore the on-campus experiences of rural, poor and working-class students. These explorations occurred through individually interviewing seven rural, poor and working-class undergraduate students, conducting focus group interviews with all participants, and reading through journal entries written by each participant, all centered around their journeys to and through college. This study engaged a framework – intertwining cumulative disadvantage, cultural flexibility, cultural integration, and cultural capital and wealth theory – to explicate the higher education experiences of students who held the dual identities of being both rural and poor or working-class. Through doing so, this study addresses: 1) how rural, poor and working-class students culturally experience higher education; 2) how, if at all, rural, poor and working-class students transition into and navigate higher education institutional cultures; and 3) how, if at all, such cultural experiences, transitions, and navigations play a role in those students’ higher education attainment.

First, a narrative was written about each student’s experience coming from their rural, poor and working-class family and community into and through higher education. These narratives offered unique stories about the students’ personal experiences in higher education, including their academic, co-curricular, social, and professional experiences. Second, paradigmatic analysis was conducted, highlighting shared themes across the narratives. Through explicating the narratives and themes through a cumulative disadvantage, culture-based framework, this study suggests that: 1) rural, poor and working-class students hold two disadvantaged identities and background factors of being both rural and poor or working-class, which are marginalized by higher education institutions; 2) as students with these dual and compounding rural and poor and working-class identities and background factors experience, transition into, and navigate higher education, they traverse campus cultural contexts that feel different from and at odds with their rural, poor and working-class upbringings; 2) the cultural experiences for rural, poor and working-class students in college are complex, as these students engage in cultural flexibility and cultural integration, while also gaining cultural capital and utilizing cultural wealth; 3) such cultural processes play a role in higher education attainment for rural, poor and working-class students, given that they utilize various cultural tools to find success in higher education.

This study concludes with implications for theory, research, and practice and policy, contributing to cumulative disadvantage, cultural, and identity theory, as well as future scholarly and professional ideas around how to study and support students in higher education with dual and compounding identities and background experiences of being rural and poor or working-class.

Author

• Ty C. McNamee, University of Kentucky